Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Thai Cooking Class: Part 2

Of course the best part of the cooking class was the actual cooking! It was kind of a challenge to get good pictures because it was a little dark in the kitchen...but here are the highlights!

We started off with Tom Yam - the popular and delicious hot and sour soup of Thailand. In order to be called Tom Yam, it MUST have Kaffir lime leaves, galangal, and lemongrass. After that, it's pretty much up to you, but without those three things, it's a different soup. I also have some chiles in mine...

Add the vegetables (you can add whatever you want; I used Chinese kale, Napa cabbage, baby corn, mushrooms, carrot, and tomato)Stir in some Tom Yam paste (which is made from chiles, lemongrass, cilantro, sugar, lime leaves, and galangal). You can make the past or buy it pre-made in a jar.That's all it takes for basic tom yam. You can also stir in just a tablespoon of coconut milk, and it changes it into a creamier, heartier soup.

Delicious!Next, we made vegetable stir fry with cashews. It was just a basic vegetable stir fry, flavored with a little sugar, golden mountain sauce, and soy sauce, and we added toasted cashews at the end.Massaman curry is my absolute favorite. It has red curry paste and curry powder, so it's a fusion of Thai and Indian flavors. It's often made with beef and potatoes, but since this was a vegetarian class, we just used the potatoes and some tofu.We made a lot of food and took a lot of notes! Green curry with sweet potato. This steamed up my camera lens!Fresh spring rolls. I love these! The wrappers were basically huge squares of noodles - just not cut up. They were much easier to work with than the dry wrappers I usually get. We also made a fabulous peanut sauce to dip these in (with coconut milk, red curry paste, tomatoes, and ground peanuts - it was some of the best peanut sauce I've ever had, and I've tried MANY recipes!)My beloved Som Tham! First, you crush up some garlic, fresh hot chiles, peanuts, lime juice, and sugar in this HUGE mortar and pestle. Then you add some pieces of long bean and slices of tomato and pound some more.Finally, you add shredded carrot and shredded green papaya, stir it all up, put it on a plate, and top with peanuts!I am VERY excited to make some of these dishes in my own kitchen, whenever I end up living in a place that has one!